Painkiller Addict Quotes

“I used to think a drug addict was someone who lived on the far edges of society. Wild-eyed, shaven-headed and living in a filthy squat.
That was until I became one...”
― Cathryn Kemp, Painkiller Addict: From Wreckage to Redemption - My True Story

“And I was – still am – in a state of permanent terror that the pancreatitis may return. I still have nightmares about hospital and it is two years since my last admission. Those nights in A&E haunt me, and will probably do so forever, with their brutality and pain. No wonder I took a bit more, then a bit more, until it all spiralled out of control. No wonder I tried to run from those damaging memories into the arms of mother opiate. Charlie”
― Cathryn Kemp, Painkiller Addict: From Wreckage to Redemption - My True Story

“There is a reason why so many heroin addicts die of their affliction. And the reason is this: the withdrawal process. It is so desperate, so frightening and all-consuming that it is simply very often the only ‘logical’ choice of an addict to keep using, to keep clinging to the chains of their addiction, rather than go through this.”
― Cathryn Kemp, Painkiller Addict: From Wreckage to Redemption - My True Story

“we are all the shunned masses, part of the bands of outcasts of a society that worships self-control and despises addiction as a moral failing.”
― Cathryn Kemp, Painkiller Addict: From Wreckage to Redemption - My True Story

“I am shielding my eyes from the sun as I look over the ruins I have trekked five days to reach. I can see the mountain tops arch into the hazy background and the stones of ancient civilisations greet me and my strong, fit body, as the sun rises in the early morning of dawn. It is a moment of glory – and I just have to find that woman again and everything will be all right. I have to find her and walk with her through the rest of this. I have to grit my teeth and walk nobly into and through this terrible mess, accepting all of it as it comes with a fortified soul. The”
― Cathryn Kemp, Painkiller Addict: From Wreckage to Redemption - My True Story

“The strands of my soul which should weave together to create a life have shredded and ripped into fragments so tangled up that I have no hope of setting them free. I”
― Cathryn Kemp, Painkiller Addict: From Wreckage to Redemption - My True Story

“Part of the reason I got so thin is because my pancreas simply couldn’t digest my food and so I couldn’t absorb anything. It took three years to get this wonder medicine prescribed for me,”
― Cathryn Kemp, Painkiller Addict: From Wreckage to Redemption - My True Story

“I notice how the relationships I did manage to cling to are starting to fade away. My friends have lives of their own and they move onwards, like a film reel before me.”
― Cathryn Kemp, Painkiller Addict: From Wreckage to Redemption - My True Story

“I feel a sense of betrayal by my body, most strongly when the attacks come, as they do, every week or so for the next few months. Each time, I am shocked that part of me wants to hurt me so badly. It feels personal. It is personal. And I feel let down by the very skin that contains me. My Judas. My disloyal body. Can”
― Cathryn Kemp, Painkiller Addict: From Wreckage to Redemption - My True Story

“I challenge anyone not to feel worn down after weeks and months of having to be grateful. When there is little enough left of your true self, somehow the gratitude feels like the last straw. Or”
― Cathryn Kemp, Painkiller Addict: From Wreckage to Redemption - My True Story

“Whether I cry about it or accept it, there is little I can do about it anyway. I am sorely grateful. And that gratitude, that essential need to live off the kindness of those around me, has worn me into a shrivelled person, a smaller version of what I once was. It has done for me what the illness has not. It is the final angry nail in the coffin of my being. For me, it means that I always have to be nice. I can’t be upset, annoyed or grumpy because I owe everyone around me so much. I owe them my life. And so it rankles, slowly niggling away at me, until each smile feels like a betrayal, each thank you feels like another reason to give up, to feel shame, remorse and regret for everything that has happened to me. I”
― Cathryn Kemp, Painkiller Addict: From Wreckage to Redemption - My True Story